My Internship Experience at NVISO – by Etienne de Jambelinne

Hello, my name is Étienne de Jamblinne.I am a second year MA student in cyber-security at the ULB. I am the one on the left in Thibaut’s photo!

As part of my program, I am required to do an internship that acquaints me with “real life” working experience.

Security Awareness?

Analysing my options, NVISO seemed a sensible choice in terms of learning achievements. As I was genuinely eager to get out of my comfort zone, I wanted to work on a project different from others, as such I decided to work with them on a project that would focus on the human side of security, rather than on the technical aspects. Cyber Security Awareness is still neglected by lots of companies, but slowly gaining traction. My work experience with Mercedes (NVISO) has been a great first step on this field, where we don’t try to impose rules on users, but rather educate them to create positive behaviours.

What have I done?

Identifying other actors in the Security Awareness area and finding the available resources and how they are used on various online platforms has been the first step in my internship. Given the fact that I had never done any market study before, my researches proved quite slow and often inefficient. However, as I was progressing, we gained a very good understanding regarding other players in the market.

The second step of my internship consisted of analysing the data and trying to understand which kind of communications work better than others. That was important to help me define which type of material NVISO should create, and which aspects should be kept into account when creating it.

For the third part of my internship, I applied the intelligence gathered in previous steps to set up my own campaign, starting from the objectives and strategy, all the way through the communication plan and the creation of the material, including images, text and videos. The idea of bringing a concrete input besides my theoretical contribution really appealed to me. I choose password security as topic for the campaign, and produced a series of humorous posters and videos that help users understand what a good password is, and why it is important.

Conclusion

I am truly pleased with my internship, and I hope (and do not doubt!) that future interns will share my feeling. I want to thank NVISO for giving me the opportunity to discover an aspect of cyber security which I knew nothing about. It shows their open-mind and willingness to educate. Thank you Mercedes, and thank you NVISO as a whole for this amazing experience!